- CIA reduces contributions to some intelligence assessments amid disputes.
- ODNI group accused of circumventing protocols, CIA of blocking access.
- IG investigation claims CIA banned ODNI access to COVID-19 intelligence.
The CIA has stopped contributing to some intelligence assessments, including those related to the Iran war, produced by the office of the country’s top spy as disputes over intelligence sharing and areas of responsibility escalate, people familiar with the matter say.
Infighting between the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has raged for more than a year, disrupting collaboration on national security analyzes that presidents have long relied on to address complex foreign challenges, a U.S. official and three people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.
At the center of the disagreements is a standoff over a task force created in April 2025 by Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, the sources said.
The CIA, led by Director John Ratcliffe, maintains that Gabbard’s Director’s Initiative Group has acted recklessly by circumventing traditional intelligence-sharing and declassification protocols, two of the people said. ODNI officials say the CIA has consistently blocked the group’s access to intelligence.
The breakdown of collaboration between intelligence agencies comes at a dangerous time for the Trump administration, with the United States embroiled in the Iran conflict and grappling with national security challenges ranging from Chinese military expansion to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
It also suggests that the post-September 11, 2001, reforms, which created a director of national intelligence to coordinate the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, have not ended the dysfunction.
“ODNI is supposed to be the oil in the system that keeps the arteries of the intelligence community flowing, that removes blockages,” said Beth Sanner, former deputy director of national intelligence during President Donald Trump’s first term.
“When you’re not doing that, then you create the possibility of agencies just going back into their pipelines and you set yourself up for intelligence failures.”
Gabbard said last week that she will step down as Trump’s top spy on June 30, citing her husband’s illness. Trump said Tuesday that he would name Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.
“The president and policymakers continue to receive the best intelligence and analysis” from intelligence agencies, said ODNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman, adding that ODNI and the agencies it oversees “communicate and collaborate daily with their CIA counterparts across the full spectrum of intelligence products and operations.”
The Director’s Initiative Group “operated within ODNI’s oversight authorities and in support of the president’s executive orders,” Coleman said.
Reuters reported in February that Gabbard had disbanded the group and reassigned its staff to another part of her agency amid scrutiny of its activities by Congress.
“Under Director Ratcliffe, the CIA quickly abandoned President Trump’s priorities with a more aggressive agency that took smart risks to outmaneuver our adversaries and give the United States a decisive advantage,” said CIA Public Affairs Director Liz Lyons.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump’s “peace through strength foreign policy” is a tried-and-true approach that keeps the United States safe and deters global threats, and that media efforts to sow domestic division would fail.
“President Trump has complete confidence in his entire exceptional national security team,” Ingle said.
Less cooperation in intelligence tasks
The CIA’s decision to significantly reduce its contributions to assessments produced by Gabbard’s office is one of the most serious consequences of mutual distrust between the agencies.
The CIA has been a major contributor to reports produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the United States’ main intelligence analytical body. Reports carry weight, especially during a war.
Two of the sources with direct knowledge of the matter said the assessments on Iran – where the US military has been fighting since February – are among those in which the agency no longer regularly participates.
The CIA and ODNI now operate largely as two separate analytical operations, the sources said.
At one point last year, the CIA, responding to friction between the two agencies, stopped publishing NIC reports on the domestic intelligence community distribution service it controls, briefly limiting the accessibility of analytical products, the sources said.
A US official said the reports were only withheld for “a few hours” as a result of a “processing issue.”
Interagency friction began shortly after Gabbard took office in February 2025, the four sources said.
Among his first acts was to impose tighter control over the production of the Presidential Daily Brief, the sources said. The CIA had long taken a lead role in compiling the report, a highly classified daily compendium of intelligence reports prepared for the president.
The relationship soured further with the creation of the Director’s Initiative Group to “root out” alleged politicization of the intelligence community, according to sources.
The group also worked to declassify documents related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, as well as investigate the security of electoral voting machines and the origins of COVID-19.
Critics, including some former intelligence officials, say the group was established as a tool to exact retaliation against Trump’s perceived political enemies.
Task force members pressured the CIA at various points to share intelligence and materials needed to complete investigations assigned by ODNI, but believed that not enough was provided, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Expulsion of CIA officers
In May 2025, Gabbard overthrew two senior CIA officials who ran the NIC.
An intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal government matters said the ODNI removed the two “because they created a toxic work environment, as documented in a workforce survey, and because they had a history of politicizing intelligence.”
The official did not provide evidence to support those claims.
Then, in August, Gabbard removed the security clearances of 37 current and former officials, in the process revealing the identity of an undercover CIA officer serving abroad.
Gabbard accused the 37 of having politicized and leaked intelligence information, but offered no evidence.
Former officials and others charged that the move was partly retaliation for a 2017 intelligence assessment that Russia had used an extensive influence operation to sway the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.
Tensions between the CIA and ODNI became public last month when a CIA official posted to the Director’s Initiative Group told a Senate panel that the agency blocked the group’s access to intelligence on the origins of COVID-19.
That dispute triggered an investigation by the intelligence community’s office of inspector general, an independent watchdog housed in ODNI, two people with knowledge of the investigation said.
Reuters The scope of the investigation could not be determined.
